Margaret Sullivan:
The New York Times has come under fire in the past for agreeing to government requests to hold back sensitive stories or information, but it bucked such requests in publishing a front-page article in Friday’s paper [about NSA and internet encryption].
The executive editor, Jill Abramson, told me that while she and the managing editor Dean Baquet went to Washington to meet with officials and gave them “a respectful hearing,” the decision to publish was “not a particularly anguished one.”
The article says that the National Security Agency has the ability — and uses it — to break the encryption used in a great deal of Internet communication. It’s an important part of a continuing set of stories on the N.S.A.’s surveillance and its implications for privacy, the early ones of which have been published largely in The Guardian and The Washington Post, as a result of a huge leak by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor.
WaPo:
Google is racing to encrypt the torrents of information that flow among its data centers around the world in a bid to thwart snooping by the NSA and the intelligence agencies of foreign governments, company officials said Friday.
The move by Google is among the most concrete signs yet that recent revelations about the National Security Agency’s sweeping surveillance efforts have provoked significant backlash within an American technology industry that U.S. government officials long courted as a potential partner in spying programs.
Whether you don't trust the WH over Syria because Bush taught you not to, or you don't trust the WH over NSA because Obama taught you not to, there's a big trust factor that will come into play for Tuesday's Oval Office speech. The press will cover it with subpoenas of AP over leaking in mind. Sometimes you reap what you sow.
More politics and policy below the fold.
Politico:
President Barack Obama will address the American people on Syria from the White House on Tuesday in an effort to shift public opinion in favor of military action, he said Friday, while declining to rule out military action if he’s unable to get sufficient congressional support.
Timothy Egan:
He’s there in every corner of Congress where a microphone fronts a politician, there in Russia and the British Parliament and the Vatican. You may think George W. Bush is at home in his bathtub, painting pictures of his toenails, but in fact he’s the biggest presence in the debate over what to do in Syria.
His legacy is paralysis, hypocrisy and uncertainty practiced in varying degrees by those who want to learn from history and those who deny it. Let’s grant some validity to the waffling, though none of it is coming from the architects of the worst global fiasco in a generation.
It's all about the president. Congress' greatest asset is the inability of the press to pay attention to what they do and don't do. If they did, the last 5% of the public that tolerates them would disappear.
William A. Galston and Elaine C. Kamarck:
The GOP is in serious trouble — and it is trouble that we, as long-time Democrats, recognize all too well.
Since their defeat in 2012, Republicans have offered plenty of excuses: candidates who can’t fire up the base, gaps in messaging and technology, the hard-to-match charisma of a historic president. And most Republican leaders seem to hope that cosmetic changes will be enough to reverse course in 2016 — without challenging the convictions of the party’s core supporters...
But we also believe that our democracy is better off with two healthy political parties willing to debate fiercely — and then reach honorable compromises. A Republican Party dominated by a new generation of reform-minded conservatives who care more about solving problems than scoring points would be a huge step toward restoring a federal government that can govern. So we’d like to pass on to Republicans now some of the advice we offered Democrats then.
The first step is to dispense with the evasion. Our manifesto explored three myths that were prevalent among Democrats in 1989— and that can be seen among Republicans today.
Addendum: I interviewed Bill Galston six months before the 2012 election
here. Stands up well over time.
Fernando Espuelas:
Common sense calls for comprehensive solutions to complex problems. And as national polling shows, Americans naturally understand that. The death-by-a-thousand cuts approach taken up by today's opponents of immigration reform assumes that people – and in particular Latinos – will not clue in to this sham: a badly disguised effort to torpedo immigration reform with a series of harsh, enforcement-only actions that delight the far right cohorts but have zero chance of conferencing with the Senate and eventually being signed into law by President Obama.